Posts Tagged ‘android beta program’

Google's developer preview timeline indicated that we'd see DP2 land around the same time as I/O. Well, the Android Beta Program page is now live for Android P, so DP2 can't be far behind. Interested parties should zip on over and register up their compatible devices for the convenience of OTA developer preview updates.

The program doesn't carry over from previous betas, so if you opted in for the O beta, you'll need to do it again for Android P.

Over the past couple of months, more and more phones have begun receiving Android 8.0 Oreo. Despite being about six months old now, Oreo is still rolling out to several devices, slowly contributing to its 1% marketshare. Just recently, Samsung started (and then stopped) the official rollout of Oreo to the Galaxy S8 and S8+, and now ZTE is joining the club by announcing its Axon 7 A2017U Oreo Preview Program.

In our post about Google pulling the Android 8.1 developer preview OTAs, many of you mentioned that you were also having trouble downloading the OTA from the Android Beta Program. Since the OTA downloads for sideloading had been pulled, that was the only way to move to 8.1 without an unlocked bootloader. Well, those problems should now be resolved.

In a post on the Google product forum related to the issue, earlier today a representative from Google let everyone experiencing the problem know that a new OTA should be rolling out now.

Looks like there are a few more hiccups to be found with Google's Android 8.1 developer preview. In addition to pulling all the OTA files, Google has also placed a hold on the developer preview factory image for the new Pixel 2, though images for other devices, such as the larger Pixel 2 XL, are still available. The explanation? A bootloader configuration issue.

According to the release notes for the developer preview, a problem with the bootloader on the Pixel 2 prevents things from working quite as they should.

The images for the Android 8.1 developer preview may have gone live yesterday, but it took a full day for the OTA update to start rolling out. If you signed up for the Android Beta Program on a compatible device, you should see the 8.1 developer preview update hit your device soon.

On that note, Google also seems to have pulled the manual OTA file downloads for the 8.1 developer preview, so right now your only options for migrating to the developer preview are registering for the Android Beta Program and waiting for the update, or flashing from the full factory images onto an unlocked bootloader.

That means right now only those on an unlocked bootloader can manually upgrade to the 8.1 developer preview images.

The images for the Android 8.1 developer preview may have gone live yesterday, but it took a full day for the OTA update to start rolling out. If you signed up for the Android Beta Program on a compatible device, you should see the 8.1 developer preview update hit your device soon.

On that note, Google also seems to have pulled the manual OTA file downloads for the 8.1 developer preview, so right now your only options for migrating to the developer preview are registering for the Android Beta Program and waiting for the update, or flashing from the full factory images onto an unlocked bootloader.

That means right now only those on an unlocked bootloader can manually upgrade to the 8.1 developer preview images.

Now that Android 8.0 Oreo is out of beta and making its way onto devices in earnest, the Wear team is taking a turn with its own preliminary firmware update. Starting today, Google's Beta Program page is now distributing an early version of the next release of Android Wear. However, if you were looking forward to a lot of new features, you might be disappointed to hear that this is being referred to as a "technical upgrade to API 26" – mostly an update to the underlying infrastructure.